I went to a funeral today … well, a few days ago, but when I wrote this it was today. A friend’s mother passed away and since my friend is around 15 years younger than I am, her mother wasn’t THAT much older than me. “S” passed away in her sleep, but they think it might have been a heart attack. We are only “women of a certain age” and that age isn’t geriatric. In other words, we are too young to die!! One of my very dear friends, “C”, had a heart attack, almost one year ago – thankfully non fatal for her. Heart disease is the number one killer of women, but highly preventable – take care of yourselves! Please!! This is turning into a Public Service Announcement, which isn’t what I intended, so I apologize for that … but, really, take care of yourselves…
As I was driving from work to attend the funeral, I was thinking about another friend, who attended a wake earlier in the week for a young person who had their whole life to look forward to living, but for whatever reason unknown to his friends and family decided that it was just too hard. I’ve attended a similar funeral and they are the worst ones to attend, because it didn’t have to be. They just needed to reach out for help. Maybe they did, but the ones to whom they reached out didn’t recognize it for what it was … I don’t know. What I do know is that it was sad, so very sad. Family and friends left behind were filled with guilt and regret.
And then I thought of a special young lady named Emily Hart, and yes I’m using her name – Google her, who was a classmate of my youngest son. She died fighting a valiant fight against Cystic Fibrosis. She was 17 and on the cusp of graduating high school. Her chair remained empty that day, except for a bouquet of flowers, just a few short months later. But Emily lived a life in her 17 short years. A full life. A life without regret. The dash between her dates was full. You know the dates I’m talking about … the date she was born and the date she died. She accomplished more in her short life than many adults I know, probably me included. Emily didn’t let her disease stop her or slow her down for long. I think it actually served to motivate her to accomplish more, because she didn’t want to be different … because she didn’t want it to beat her. She lived. No regrets.
I was also thinking about my friends S and C, but especially C. She was given a second chance at life. I must admit that we haven’t been as close the last few years and don’t see each other very often, so I’m not sure how it affected her. I don’t know if she did an evaluation of her life and was happy with what she saw, or if she saw things that she regretted. But she was given a do-over. A second chance. Who wouldn’t want that opportunity?
You never know when it’s your time to die … young, geriatric, or somewhere in between, but you know what? We each have that opportunity for a do-over, every day we are alive – we don’t need a near death experience to have that do-over. From here on out, we can choose to live a life without regret. We can’t change the past, and the regrets that go with it, but why would we want to? It’s made us who we are today. Some regrets may be big. Others may be small. We can learn from them, each and every one, if we choose to do so … and then let them go.
One thing I do know is that I’d like the dash between MY dates to be full and without regret.
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March 14th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Ahh, Toni. A wonderful and a poignant message to men, women and children of all ages. Live life with eyes wide open. Take nothing for granted and put yourself first, in a healthy unselfish way. Bravo for your words to make others realize how we all must treat life.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Oh and a crackin’ good processed image!
March 14th, 2010 at 12:35 am
Nice post Toni & I agree with you. Live as fully as possible, jamming as much into each day that you can. Especially love & friendship. I don’t want to miss out on anything!
March 14th, 2010 at 1:09 am
Toni, wonderful post. I lost a friend 2 weeks ago. An Internet friend. She was only in her 50′s and had just retired. A sudden illness and she was gone, like in 2 days. I had never met her in real life, but through the connections on the Internet, I knew lots about her life. I miss her, and it certainly was a reminder to me…..live each day as if it was your last…..you just never know.
March 14th, 2010 at 4:20 am
Most of us who are reading your poignant words, Toni, are probably aware of our mortality more so than others perhaps. And yet it’s still easy for us to not pay attention to the NOW and what’s in front of us. Today is all we have…which behooves us to live it as though it were our last. Along with your own cautions, let me add that we need to get our Wills in order and all our final wishes…so that the State doesn’t makes the decisions for us. Two years ago I lost my (then) mother-in-law, only 5 years my senior. It was a mess taking care of her estate. She wasn’t expecting to die! That in-between time, between young and geriatric, is where most of us are right now. Thanks for the reminder to pay attention to the dash!
March 14th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Such a heartfelt and inspiring post..and a wonderful reminder to live our lives as if each moment might be our last. Especially love how you’ve framed life as the ‘dash’ between two ‘dots’. Brilliant!!!
March 14th, 2010 at 7:47 am
and so the moral of the story is, live, every day. how sad that we need to be reminded how precious our lives are. a very sensitive lovely post toni.
March 14th, 2010 at 9:59 am
My husband and I just attended our daughter-in-law’s mother’s funeral this past week. Talk about hitting home how precious life is! I hug our precious grandchildren every chance I get, knowing their other grandmother no longer has that opportunity.
Like Ginnie, we just recently went through the will/estate planning process. There is a certain sense of peace knowing that step is completed.
Thank you for presenting a topic that we all need to think about but don’t really want to.
March 14th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Now that I am retired I try to live my life fully. Go on a little trip if we can afford it or just stay and watch the birds, even if I should do some room cleaning. If a book is very interesting, I’ll just stop everything and read it for a few hours. Our old wills were done when our daughters were little and are now out of date. Last year we found a lawyer who would update our wills. We procrastinated and this month tried to set up an appointment. We found out that she had passed away at 45 years of age a couple of months ago. So, it is truly hard to know when our time has come.
March 14th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Live every day to the fullest is the only way. I hear you!
March 14th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Your story really makes one think, what they are doing with their life and why?
March 14th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
So true. I feel so bad when, during the week at work, I keep wishing for the weekends. Wishing 5 days a week away…sad.
March 14th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
It’s the dash that counts doesn’t it?
March 14th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I say: Live the life you love and love the life you live !
March 14th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Yes, I think that even at our “certain age” we start to realize how precious life is…for me it came a few years ago, I was ill with something that turned out to be fixable, but it took a year for the doctors to figure that out. During that year I was sick much of the time, and had a lot of days to think about what I do or don’t regret and how I want to live the rest of my life. That was my wake-up call, and I am glad to have had it, because life should be lived just as you said, fully, and with no regrets!
March 15th, 2010 at 3:53 am
My world often takes me to the heart of such moments, where peoples worlds are turned upside down, yesterday the world was good, today it is bleak. I come home,in every sense of the word, collect myself as best I can and count my blessings, such experiences change your values.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
That’s the thing, isn’t it? “A Life Well Lived.”
March 15th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
My brother-in-law used the ‘dash between the dates’ in the eulogy he presented for his mother. It was beautiful and served as a reminder to focus on the lives of our loved ones and not just remember the date of their passing. Farmergal
March 16th, 2010 at 12:17 am
wonderful words. this was a conversation i was having recently with very close friends, here on holiday with me from the uk. J was my mother’s best friend, mum asked her to ‘take care of us’ before she died – we were very young. J has been such an important figure in my life ever since, this was her first trip to africa
. we were talking about death and how it is perceived here…it’s very much a part of life here, i’m not sure i can explain it well enough now – but it’s accepted and understood and maybe not so much feared. people die, and are gone and everyone gets on. i think because it happens so much, the main reason being what it is…graveyards seem to appear all over the place all the time.
March 22nd, 2010 at 9:42 am
Amen.